We have accepted the challenge to write 365 short stories in 365 days. Can we do it?

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion

It was the summer after my senior year of high school. You know the time everyone says is the greatest time of your life. A time of responsibility and no responsibility all at the same time. I met Sarah at the neighborhood pool. She was smoking hot. A “perfect 10” as my dad would say, a real looker. We did everything together. I found out we were planning on going to the same university. We liked the same types of things. Swimming, rock climbing, running, the occasional old school game of Wii Sports or some Mario Brothers. She was perfect. Well, I thought she was perfect at first. She was a bit jealous. Any time another girl would even glance my direction she would go off. I am not talking about just a little bit, but full tilt crazy. There would be yelling, screaming, and throwing stuff. It wasn’t pretty. I couldn’t hang out with my friends that were girls from high school with out her freaking out. My mom thought this was a huge warning flag. I told her that it wasn’t that big a deal. Dad backed me up by saying I was old enough to make my own decisions. He also said if I made the wrong decision then I would need to just take the consequences that came with my actions. As a compromise, we usually hung out with my guy friends, which wasn’t that bad a deal. We went to more baseball games that summer than I had ever been to before in my life. She had this way of escalating my behavior by dares. She was real bad about doing this in front of my friends. It was like she knew they could talk me into it if she couldn’t do it on her own. She convinced me to sky dive recently. Mom wasn’t crazy about it, but dad was on my side again. We took the lessons and today was our first solo jump. We jumped together holding hands. It was so awesome just falling, holding her hand, and looking out over the deep blue sky. With the wind screaming past our ears, she said, “I want to be with you to the end.” “Me too,” I called back. She held me close and said, “I didn’t pack our chutes.” I looked at her mouthing why. She just said, “I love you. I pulled her close and watched the ground rush toward us.